Smart Tags Research Articles

Editorial: Special Issue in Privacy, Security and Trust for Mobile Systems

Recently, mobile devices, such as wireless sensors, smart tags, RFIDs, tablets, PDAs and smart phones, have become pervasive and attracted significant interest from academia, industry, and standardization organizations. Integrating the latest cloud computing technology, these mobile devices are playing a more and more important role in computing and communication systems. Millions of mobile applications have been developed in the last several years, which dramatically changes the way that people manage their daily life, for example, mobile payment and mobile social networks have changed our life significantly. When the storage, processing and communicating of many sensitive data have been migrated to mobile devices, privacy, security and trust become critical factors for the acceptance of mobile applications and maintaining a reliable mobile environment becomes an essential requirement. Several favorable characteristics of mobile andwireless devices, including portability, mobility, and sensitivity, further impose the challenge of security and privacy in these systems. Finally, the constrained hardware and software supports of those devices make it even more challenging to build a secure, privacy-preserving and trusted mobile system. Despite recent advances, many research issues still remain in the design of secure, privacypreserving, or trust architectures, protocols, algorithms, services, and applications on mobile and wireless systems. For example, when mobile devices have more storage space, higher bandwidth, and better sensing capability, more sensitive information will be stored over there and more demanding application will be created. On the other hand, operating systems running on these devices are not as powerful and reliable as those on traditional computers. Both OS layer and higher-level layer protocols are expected to enhance the security and preserve the privacy of these mobile devices. With more mobile devices being used in online social networks and various ad-hoc network systems, novel trust models are essential for new applications. New cryptographic algorithms, intrusion detection and preventionmechanisms,

무선통신을 이용한 위치인식 시스템 개발

In this paper, Implementation of location estimation system using wireless communication technology based on Zigbee. Using wireless communication technology, calculation more accurate location information and service location information to the H/W and S/W has been developed. Receivers, repeaters, smart tag(location device), was developed for implement a location estimation system. The smart tag is built the 120~130KHz, 13~14MHz, 2.0~3.0GHz radio frequency tag. Receiver and repeater is applied to the tag module to recognize the location device`s active RFID tags transmit a wireless signal for tag identification. Common Entrance control system in contact with a smart tag, It was implemented to transfer the value of the tag to the access control server over a LAN.

An Efficient Location-Based Service Technology using Self-Powered Smart Tags

LBS(Location-Based Service)의 시장을 확대하고 새로운 부가가치를 창출하기 위해서는 1~2m 이내에 있는 특정 물체나 특정 위치의 존재를 사전정보가 없는 사용자에게 쉽게 알려 줄 수 있는 정밀 위치 측위 기술이 필요하다. 이를 위해 본 논문에서는 스마트 태그 기반 위치 측위 시스템을 제안한다. 제안하는 시스템은 블루투스 기술과 태양전지 기술을 통해 스마트 태그를 구현하고 이를 블루투스 기능이 설치되어 있는 스마트 폰에서 탐색한다. 또한 구현된 스마트 태그는 태양전지 기술을 사용해서 외부 전원 없이 빛만 있으면 자가 전력으로 동작한다. 본 논문에서는 제안하는 스마트 태그의 효용성을 증명하기 위해 실제 구현한 스마트 태그를 이용하여 인식 시간, 인식 성공률, 전력 소모량 등을 측정하였다.

Wireless smart tag with potentiometric input for ultra low-power chemical sensing

The Internet of Things (IoT) envisions a future based on billions of smart connected devices. Devices that sense their surroundings and which when combined with cloud computing services will provide information on scales ranging from the microscopic to global. We demonstrate here for the first time the development and characterisation of an ultra low-power radio-frequency identification (RFID) wireless sensor tag with potentiometric input for use with pH and ion-selective electrodes. Tags such as this will be critical to the practical realisation of the Internet of Things. The tag is able to autonomously measure and store electrode potential in its internal memory, and then transfer logged data wirelessly by RFID to a nearby reader or by near field communication (NFC) to a smart phone. The unique features of the sensor tag include its ultra low-power consumption, potentiometric sensing ability, autonomous data logging, and RFID/NFC compatible air interface. These features make the tag suitable for use where pH or ion-selective electrodes are deployed as stand-alone chemical sensors or as part of larger chemical sensor networks that will underpin the IoT. pH determination in solution is used as an experimental example for illustrating measurement capability of the tag, and its analytical performance is compared to a standard laboratory pH meter.

Organic single crystals: Addressing the fundamentals of organic electronics

Abstract

Model Verification of a Safe Security Authentication Protocol Applicable to RFID System

Abstract RFID is an automatic identification technology that can control a range of information via IC chips and radio communication. Also known as electronic tags, smart tags or electronic labels, RFID technology enables embedding the overall process from production to sales in an ultra-small IC chip and tracking down such information using radio frequencies. Currently, RFID-based application and development is in progress in such fields as health care, national defense, logistics and security. RFID structure consists of a reader that reads tag information, a tag that provides information and the database that manages data. Yet, the wireless section between the reader and the tag is vulnerable to security issues. To sort out the vulnerability, studies on security protocols have been conducted actively. However, due to difficulties in implementation, most suggestions are concerned with theorem proving, which is prone to vulnerability found by other investigators later on, ending up in many troubles with applicability in practice. To experimentally test the security of the protocol proposed here, the formal verification tool, CasperFDR was used. To sum up, the proposed protocol was found to be secure against diverse attacks. That is, the proposed protocol meets the safety standard against new types of attacks and ensures security when applied to real tags in the future.

위치인식 불가의 극한상황에서 성범죄 예방 상황인지 서비스를 위한 스마트 전자발찌 시스템

기존 전자발찌 시스템은 GPS 위성 및 휴대폰 기지국 통신을 통해 성범죄자의 위치를 추적하고 재범을 방지하는 장치이다. 하지만 GPS 위성통신 방식은 위성 신호 수신이 어려운 도심 건물의 실내나 지하철에서는 제대로 작동하지 않는다. 이러한 경우 휴대폰 기지국 통신을 통해 위치추적을 할 수 있다. 그러나 휴대폰 기지국은 설치범위가 수백 미터 간격으로 넓기 때문에, 위치추적을 할 경우 오차범위가 최대 2 ㎞일 만큼 정확도가 떨어진다. 만약 도심의 5층 건물에서 유치원이 2층에 위치해 있고 커피숍과 성범죄자가 3층에 위치해 있다면, 기존 전자발찌는 건물 내부로 인해 GPS 위성통신으로 위치추적이 안되고 휴대폰 기지국 통신으로도 정확한 층에 대한 위치인식이 안 된다. 전자발찌는 위치인식 기반의 시스템으로 이러한 현상은 커다란 문제가 된다. 따라서 본 논문은 이런 위치인식 불가의 극한환경에서 USN을 이용하여 성범죄자들을 감시할 수 있는 스마트 전자발찌 시스템을 제안한다.

Disaster triage: Evidence, consistency and standard practice

Triage has military origins, with the initial purpose being to direct care to those most likely to be able to return to the battlefield. Conversely, modern disaster triage attempts to ensure both the prioritisation of care for those who need it most and a fair distribution of resources, so that health responders are able to ‘do the most for the most’...

An Improved In-line Inkjet Printing Process for 3D Multilayer Passive Devices

ABSTRACTThis paper describes an in-line process for the realization of 3D electronic components on A4 format substrate by piezo inkjet printing. This process is developed within a semi-industrial prototype system named “JETPAC”. JETPAC includes an oxygen plasma torch for surface preparation and post-process modules as a variable frequency microwave oven and an UV lamp for metal selective sintering and dielectric ink curing, respectively. JETPAC is used to achieve passive components by chaining conductor and dielectric layers on kapton® substrate: silver nanoparticles based ink is used to print conductors. For multilayer component elaboration, the metal ink is deposited both on kapton® and on printed dielectric materials. Due to a low surface energy (S.E) of the printed dielectric, the realization of efficient silver tracks is compromised. A special process combines O2 plasma treatment and UV exposure before printing, allowing the reaching of S.E. value on dielectric near the optimum one (55mN/m). This pre-process allows printing of well-defined conductive structures on top of the dielectric. In-line sintering of printed structures is then performed using variable frequency microwave source. The process allows the elaboration of multilayer structures including stacked resistors and capacitors. These results make the developed process very promising for the realization by inkjet printing of passive devices for smart tag applications.

Combining heterogeneous service technologies for building an Internet of Things middleware

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that allows ordinary objects to be uniquely identified by “smart tags” which are also capable of storing small quantities of data. The term Internet of Things was originated from a vision strongly coupled with supply-chain concerns and RFID tagged objects. However the idea of such Internet of Things has evolved in a wider sense, referring now to a ubiquitous object society combining RFID, sensor networks and pervasive computing technologies. This scenario involves different requirements such as heterogeneity and dynamicity of objects, sensors, applications and protocols as well as the need for allowing the dynamic evolution of such applications. These issues seemed to be easily addressed if the principles of service-oriented computing (SOC), like loose coupling and heterogeneity, are used for constructing such architectures and applications. In this paper we underline what benefits SOC can offer to constructing a middleware for the Internet of Things. These concepts have been applied in a service-oriented middleware that tries to leverage the existing Internet of Things architectural concepts by using SOC principles in order to bring more flexibility and dynamicity. We describe the approaches used in that middleware and the lessons learned from that experience. This middleware was initially tested on an application for tracking and monitoring supply-chain objects, and later extended to target wider application domains that are also described in this paper. The project described here has become part of the OW2 AspireRFID open-source project.

Improved Kalman Filter Method for Measurement Noise Reduction in Multi Sensor RFID Systems

Recently, the range of available Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags has been widened to include smart RFID tags which can monitor their varying surroundings. One of the most important factors for better performance of smart RFID system is accurate measurement from various sensors. In the multi-sensing environment, some noisy signals are obtained because of the changing surroundings. We propose in this paper an improved Kalman filter method to reduce noise and obtain correct data. Performance of Kalman filter is determined by a measurement and system noise covariance which are usually called the R and Q variables in the Kalman filter algorithm. Choosing a correct R and Q variable is one of the most important design factors for better performance of the Kalman filter. For this reason, we proposed an improved Kalman filter to advance an ability of noise reduction of the Kalman filter. The measurement noise covariance was only considered because the system architecture is simple and can be adjusted by the neural network. With this method, more accurate data can be obtained with smart RFID tags. In a simulation the proposed improved Kalman filter has 40.1%, 60.4% and 87.5% less Mean Squared Error (MSE) than the conventional Kalman filter method for a temperature sensor, humidity sensor and oxygen sensor, respectively. The performance of the proposed method was also verified with some experiments.

Anodized Aluminum Oxide Thin Films for Room‐Temperature‐Processed, Flexible, Low‐Voltage Organic Non‐Volatile Memory Elements with Excellent Charge Retention

Despite considerable achievements in organic electronics, including examples of complex integrated circuits, [ 1 ] transistor matrix arrays for optical [ 2 ] and Braille displays, [ 3 ] image scanners, [ 4 ] and large-area electronic skin, [ 5 ] non-volatile organic memories remain underexploited. [ 6 ] Even at the lower end of the market, where potential applications are smart cards, wireless tags, and large-area sensors, no non-volatile memory that meets the minimum requirements in terms of access time, retention, and endurance is currently available. [ 6a ] Although there are several types of memory, such as electret, [ 7 ] ferroelectric polymer, [ 8 ] resistive, [ 9 ] and fl ash, [ 10 ] that may be considered suitable, none of them have reached maturity. Electret memories usually require high operating voltages and suffer from long programming times and low charge retention. [ 7 ] Ferroelectric polymer memories face problems known from their inorganic counterparts: interface charge trapping, fatigue, and imprint. [ 8 ] Resistive memories require currents to operate the memory. [ 9 ] Organic fl ash memories, based on fi eld-effect transistors with a fl oating gate architecture where charges stored in the fl oating gate change the threshold voltage of the transistor, currently suffer from either high voltage operation or low charge retention, typically on the order of a few hours or days. [ 10 ] In fl ash memories, the dielectric used to isolate the fl oating gate from the gate electrode and from the semiconductor is the main problem. The gate dielectric must be dense to achieve extremely low leakage currents, and it must provide very large dielectric breakdown strength. [ 11 ]

A credit card sized self powered smart sensor node

This paper reports a self powered smart sensor node (also called ‘smart tag’) consisting of a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester, a power conditioning circuit, sensors and an RF transmitter. The smart tag has dimensions similar to a credit card and can be easily integrated into various applications such as the surface of the aircraft. The smart tag is powered by an integrated bimorph piezoelectric generator that extracts energy from ambient vibrations. The generator is fabricated using thick film printing technology. Experimentally, the generator produced a maximum RMS output power of 240 μW when excited at vibration with a frequency of 67 Hz and peak amplitude of 0.4 g (3.9 m s −2). This generated power is sufficient to enable periodic sensing and transmission. Details of the experimental results of the piezoelectric generator and the power conditioning circuit are presented. Test shows that the waiting time of the system between two consecutive transmissions is around 800 s.

Printed Antennas for Combined RFID and 2D Barcodes

The adoption of RFID and Near Field Communication (NFC) Devices, while slower than the optimistic projections of several years back, is nevertheless relentless, to the effect that large retailers such as Wal-Mart are willing to place RFID labels costing roughly 0.10 per package on products which retail for less than US 7. The advantage of the RFID adoption is initially in inventory management (“just in time” stocking) and re-ordering, sales analytics, etc. However, by combining the printing of the RFID antenna with the printing of other consumer features, significant cost benefits can result. We have tested combining an RFID antenna with the printing of a 2D barcode, and demonstrated that we can replicate the 96-bit GS1 SGTIN (Serialized Global Trade Item Number) information of the RFID chip in the 2D barcode, while using the reference (“L” shaped outline of two of the four sides of the 2D barcode) of the 2D barcode for the RFID antenna. Properly crafting the antenna can result in a significant increase in RFID reading range (up to 100X in our experiments), and the antenna can also be crafted to fit the form factor of the product tag. Our paper will discuss some of the implications this work has on hybrid (printing + sensors) smart labels and tags and their use in various retail, industrial, government and manufacturing workflows.

Why Going Towards Plastic and Flexible Sensors?

The emergence of the fields of wearable devices, e-textiles and smart packaging brings new requirements on electronics and sensing systems. One or a combination of the following properties can be desired for their proper operation and to meet the functionalities required by the application in order to improve market penetration. Very low-cost, thin, large area, lightweight, flexibility, conformability, transparency, stretchability are some of the characteristics that can be offered by making sensors on polymeric foil. We propose printing processes for the fabrication of these devices to mainly reduce their production cost and to improve the environmental friendliness of their manufacturing. In this communication, we discuss the benefits, drawbacks, potential, and challenges of printing sensors on plastic substrates illustrated with some examples of technical developments performed in our laboratory. We present environmental sensors fabricated on plastic foil and the associated flexible encapsulation method at the foil level. Integration of printed sensing devices on smart RFID tags is also discussed. By using thin polymeric substrates, very small bending radius of curvature can be achieved. Besides the challenges linked to the large area printing of the sensing devices on flexible foil and the reliability of these devices under mechanical cycling, new developments are required on the interconnectivity of these devices with other electronics components to achieve efficient system integration.

Recommending items in pervasive scenarios: models and experimental analysis

In this paper, we propose and investigate the effectiveness of fully decentralized, collaborative filtering techniques. These are particularly interesting for use in pervasive systems of small devices with limited communication and computational capabilities. In particular, we assume that items are tagged with smart tags (such as passive RFIDs), storing aggregate information about the visiting patterns of users that interacted with them in the past. Users access and modify information stored in smart tags transparently, by smart reader devices that are already available on commercial mobile phones. Smart readers use private information about previous behavior of the user and aggregate information retrieved from smart tags to recommend new items that are more likely to meet user expectations. Note that we do not assume any transmission capabilities between smart tags: Information exchange among them is mediated by users’ collective and unpredictable navigation patterns. Our algorithms do not require any explicit interaction among users and can be easily and efficiently implemented. We analyze their theoretical behavior and assess their performance in practice, by simulation on both synthetic and real, publicly available data sets. We also compare the performance of our fully decentralized solutions with that of state-of-the-art centralized strategies.

The development of enhancing mechanisms for improving the performance of IEEE 802.15.4

There has been increasing interest in wireless network system in recent years, yet there are many issues to be resolved, mainly on topics related to its application design, such as the field of robot, artificial intelligence, and healthcare system etc. IEEE 802.15.4 is a standard protocol needed to achieve the low cost, low power consumption and low data rate Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN) widely used in remote metering, building automation, toys, smart tags, industry control, etc. The IEEE 802.15.4 protocol specifies the inclusion of a physical layer (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer for LR-WPAN. The PHY contains three different frequency bands comprised of 27 radio frequency channels. The MAC sub-layer handles all access to the physical radio channel. The MAC protocol controls potential contention and collisions but the slotted CSMA/CA algorithm cannot effectively avoid collisions in IEEE 802.15.4. Therefore, the transmission performance is affected. Most current research is focused on reducing power consumption, the development of enhanced routing approaches and the like. Studies focused on reducing collision problems are rare. In this study, two novel hash channel selection mechanisms for improving performance of IEEE 802.15.4 are proposed. Meanwhile, a star topology is constructed for simultaneous simulation and evaluation of the hash mechanism using NS-2 simulations. The results of the simulation reveal that the proposed hash mechanisms offers improved throughput, utilization, average delay and drop-off performance in all respects for IEEE 802.15.4 by about 100%. Keywords: IEEE 802.15.4, MAC, Hash channel selection, Transmission performance

A Model for Intelligent Transportation of Perishable Products

In this paper we propose a model for the application of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and wireless sensors in food logistics to ensure the products’ quality and the traceability along the supply chain, from farms to consumers. The wireless sensors can detect the conditions of the food quality and transmit the information to the RFID tags. The RFID tags can also record other information such as the expired date and communicate with the computer system through the RFID reader. Once the low qualities of products or bad conditions of storage environment are detected, some reactions such as enhancing the package or removing the bad products can be taken immediately in the distribution centers. According to the information on the smart tags, the distribution and the vehicle routing plans are determined to maintain better qualities of the food products when they arrive at the retailers.

Investigating RFID Enabled Devices in Smart Electronic Learning Environments

For e-learning systems to be successful, proper understanding of the learner is crucial. This can be done with the use of learnersâ?? profiles. However, there is a need for the availability of such information for mobile learning environments to make it available when the learner roams between different spaces. This paper investigates the application of RFID technologies for this use. We suggest using new advancements in RFID technologies with smart tags to identify and extract learnersâ?? data/profile in the move. Furthermore, the learner will be carrying this data for better learning interoperability in smart spaces. New interesting educational scenarios are becoming available to provide context-awareness for the educational process. The tradeoffs between the availability of further information and privacy are discussed.

German ‘LexIconSpace’: Policy Positions and their Legislative Context

This article presents a new approach for estimating the policy positions of political actors in the German multi-party policy space. The approach consists of two steps, ‘smart tagging’ in the data generation process and Bayesian factor analysis in the estimation process. ‘Smart tagging’ relates the statements of political parties and governments to the keywords of German federal legislation, which we use to estimate the policy positions in portfolio-specific n-dimensional policy spaces. Our G-LIS approach (German ‘LexIconSpace’) provides several advantages for scholars evaluating policy-seeking theories, in particular by providing context-related variation of policy positions across portfolios and over time. Our findings for the portfolio of ‘labour and social policy’ reveal a two-factor solution which unfolds a latent ‘resource’ and ‘value’ dimension in Germany during the period from 1961 to 2009. We find changes in the policy positions of German political parties and governments, which existing approaches can hardly identify in n-dimensional spaces under the specification of the error term for each dimension and actor.